Some Los Angeles parents are fighting the city's most progressive activist groups, and violence in the school district has nearly doubled since police were removed from school campuses following unrest over the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
María Luisa Palma, a member of the Parent Advisory Committee in Los Angeles, organized a separate petition in February calling for the return of police to school campuses, as district data revealed that violent incidents increased from 2,315 in the 2018 school year -2019 to 4,569 in 2022-2023.
“We've seen a huge increase among our children,” Palma told Fox News Digital in an interview. “We constantly hear about fights and open drug use in the bathrooms. We see the proof in the data… so we have clearer information. This is out of control, our children tell us.”
Palma's petition has so far garnered more than 2,500 signatures from parents at more than 300 schools and all seven board districts. She said “the more the merrier.” There is no signature limit.
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Los Angeles police officers (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
In 2021, Students Deserve, a progressive grassroots student organization advocating for the abolition of police in schools, pressured the LAUSD and school board to divest money from the Los Angeles School District Police.
The group argued that the presence of police officers on school campuses often led to the criminalization of students, particularly those from black and brown communities, and contributed to a hostile and intimidating environment that hindered learning.
“We want schools to get rid of criminalization and policing,” the Students Deserve website states. “We want schools to invest in us as Black, Muslim, undocumented, Indigenous and queer youth in poor and working class communities of color. We follow the lead of Black Lives Matter by demanding that our schools defund the police and defend the lives of the blacks.”
Students Deserve, working closely with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles and the California Teachers Association, got the school district to reevaluate its budget priorities and reallocate $25 million from school police to alternative support services, such as counselors, health professionals mental health and restorative justice programs.
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A BLM protester projects a “defund the police” message on a wall at the Oakland Police Department on January 29, 2023. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Many Students Deserve representatives will appear at board meetings, Palma said, and urge members not to invest funds in the school's police department.
“They were the group that helped create the situation in the first place,” Palma said. “They are the group that the board listens to and that is why they continue to oppose what the parents want.”
The school board voted unanimously in February 2021 to eliminate officers stationed in schools and already rejected a resolution in September 2021 that would have reinstated police.
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A Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department vehicle. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department)
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“This is not a question of whether or not the district has funds to fully fund a functioning police department to safely patrol our schools and have officers assigned to our campuses,” Palma said. “It's a political statement to appease the defund police movement.”
The LAUSD school board is developing a new safety plan. However, the board has not indicated whether the plan includes returning police officers to schools.
